Eating Disorders Make You Broke And Lonely

Hi! Oh boy have I missed the internet! I was forced offline for about a week, and it was hard – pulling your own teeth out hard! A mix of things being financially tight and even more than that, the fact that I’m still under the guardianship of a public trustee, meant that it’s been a long 6 month process (more like all out war) in order to be able to finally purchase decent plans to use both internet and mobile phone.

One of the long term side effects of living with an eating disorder is very often financial problems. For me, it’s meant I’ve been unable to have a paid job (so far) and living on a disability pension. I’m very thankful for that – but as most people will say, it’s already quite a pinch.

Add in an eating disorder and things can be disastrous.

Thankfully, as far as I can remember, I never defaulted on rent or bills, or paid them late. But things got more and more difficult as I was hospitalised so much. Back in ‘those days’ – the pre-millenium years – we didn’t have automated bill paying or money transferring services like BPay, Centrelink etc. Every week or fortnight, I made a trip to my bank to take money from my account, then a trip to the bank of my landlord, or the post office, or the real estate agent or leasing office to pay my rent in person. I paid my electricity bills and phone bills over the counter at the post office. Same for other bills and expenses that popped up here and there – you couldn’t jump online and electronically transfer the funds without leaving your home. You had to go out and do it in person.

You can’t do that when you are always in hospital! So it did get quite tricky, and  I was worried. My accomodation was boarding houses and hostels mostly at that stage – and it doesn’t take much to lose a room. I was frightened of what might happen if I got so sick I was unable to let anyone know where I was or pay my bills – I might get out of hospital to find I had nowhere to live at all any more.

More seriously, bingeing happened. Specifically, bingeing and purging. I had emotionally eaten before my most serious descent into anorexia to the degree that I was borderline overweight for a very short time. And I remember being so out of control with the stuffing and the musteat-can’tnoteat-can’tbearnottoeat feelings that I would be in physical agony and crying, and just lie down long enough for it to settle a bit and be needing to eat again. But I didn’t have the money worries that bulimia brings. I was able to go without the excess food if I didn’t have money for it.

Bulimia meant I was taking away just as much as I was putting in – still in starvtion, in fact probably making it worse because I was losing stomach fluids, nutrition already in my system etc every time I purged, and creating a chemical chaos for my bloodstream. Being physically uncomfortably full didn’t happen, or at least if it did, I ‘undid’ it. I could eat a truckload of food and still be starving ravenously hungry.

Purging is, in hindsight, the thing I’d most like to go back in time and ‘unlearn’. The rest of the eating disorder was hell enough – purging was like opening the very gates to hell and being unable to ever shut them again against the hordes pouring out. Even in my fight against dying from starvation from the anorexia – it’s more complicated for me because of the purging. Before purging, it used to be a battle to follow the meal plans and put on the weight, especially when not in hospital and on my own – but at least once I got the food in, the physical part of the fight was over. Ed thrashed me in my mind, but it couldn’t do anything about it, and that was the end of that.  But with purging, it wasn’t the end. Because hours after I’d won that battle to eat, I was still able to undo all my hard work in one moment. It was absolutely gutting to have fought so hard and to undo it all just like that, be back where I started or in even more a precarious position.

I had some savings, but it wasn’t long for bulimia to have totally eroded them and I was taking the last bit of cash to my name out of the ATM machine. That was a shock for me, as I had been in denial and not keeping note of how much money I was spending any more. Suddenly it was gone and I knew I had no choice but to stop this, now. I couldn’t say to myself any more that I could just do this for a while, eat everything I craved for once, and then stop it next week or next month and get back to normal. I had to stop it NOW or I was in trouble.

Except I couldn’t. I found myself frantic, unable to cope at all without the bingeing – which in the short time I’d been doing it had become my major coping mechanism after starvation – and yet unable to cope in other ways if I continued.  I could no longer pretend it was just about me ‘making up’ for all the missing out and starving, no longer pretend I was just ‘tasting all the foods I had never gotten to try’. The foods became the cheapest, blandest stuff on offer. Old, discarded, stale, it didn’t matter, if it was edible, it served a purpose.

I wonder if people who become addicted to drugs start off that way too, they care about the quality of the drugs they are taking, and then when they are desperately addicted and the funds run dry, they’ll take anything they can get. Same with drinking, where the person might start out with cocktails or beers and end up slugging down methylated spirits?

Long story short, if things were financially tight before, they were precarious now. As I said before, I didn’t actually default on my responsibilities – but I was terrified that it was only a matter of time. My pattern became that I’d get my pension, immediately pay everything that was due, then the rest of it – usually about $150 or so – would be binged away within about two days. The rest of the fortnight I walked everywhere and went without food whatsoever. I do have to admit, part of me purposely wanted to get rid of the money as soon as possible – because when it was gone, the bingeing was over. And sure, it was hell not being able to binge, but I preferred the numbed control of the starvation.

It was not sustainable, and I knew it. I started scrambling for help. And somehow I stumbled on the public trustee of my state. I’m fuzzy about the details, but I asked them for help, with the support of my case manager, and they took over.

Took over, completely. All my pension goes to them. They control every cent I own. They pay the bills – rent, utilities, pharmacy account, nutritional account, cat boarding account, etc – and give me a small allowance weekly for my food, toiletries, transport, household items, and most importantly, Shalimar. They have a strict budget to allow me to purchase items or pay accounts that come up during the year. By ‘strict’, I mean, blood flows more easily from a stone. The trustees are notoriously strict and out of touch with their clients – I’m not the only one who has complained – and I think they forget that they have a lot of power over our entire lives.

Asking them for a more affordable internet and phone option should have been straightforward – after all, we are in the business of saving money, right? But no. They wanted me to continue with a heinously expensive and unaffordable pre-paid option that I simply could not afford. I’d go through the tiny amount very quickly and then be fighting with them again for more. I gave them quote after quote for plans that were more affordable and better suited to my needs, each being rejected – “No plans over six months in length” or “You must have unlimited data allowance if you are on a plan” (which would be great, but I couldn’t afford that sort of plan. I am not even a heavy user, I probably use 4 GB a month) Finally they were saying, “You can’t have the internet.”

Most people will probably think, so what? What’s the big deal? Internet is a luxury. I fully agree, it’s a luxury. I could go to my local library and use it there, for example. But – I’m deaf, remember. Profoundly deaf. I struggle to pick up a lot of what’s said to me in person. When it comes to communicating over the phone – there isn’t a hope. I’m also extremely isolated. I live alone, and despite being so much better, I’m still physically pretty unwell. (Shalimar is great company, and I do not know how I managed to cope without her, I really don’t – but let’s just say she’s not the best conversationalist )

For me, the internet is a lifeline. I make phone calls online, using a relay service. During the day time, I communicate regularly with my case managers and support workers and even my therapists with SMS and email. And at night time especially, I use it to distract myself and to recieve and give support. I talk to my friends, both those I know in person, and those I have only (yet) met online. I use it for meal support in that it takes my mind off the meal to some degree, and then it occupies me and keeps me communicating rather than sticking my head down the toilet afterwards, and it keeps me out of the fridge and pantry at my most vulnerable times – or at least delays all these things, which is a good start.

Also, unlikely but extremely important – if I don’t have the internet, I cannot call for help if I need it. I cannot call our emergency services – because I cannot hear on my phone. We don’t as yet have text support to contact emergency services (although I hear it’s been on the agenda for a while). Unless I’m able to SMS a friend and ask them to call emergency services for me – and that’s time consuming and often not really something I want to do. I don’t want to worry them, for example. And they might not have their phone turned on or read the text for a while, and then I’m stuffed!

I used to be such a loner. So withdrawn and shy. I lived in my own world – I didn’t want a bar of this world. Much of the time I was actually dissociated – and I preferred it that way. My little inner world was safer than the real world. But these days, I’ve come to crave social interaction. It’s the people I’ve met, the friends I’ve made and come to adore who make my world go round, my life worth living. Even when I’m not up to talking, just sitting here and seeing people talking on facebook or somewhere else helps me feel not so alone in this world. It literally opened a huge window to the world where before, there was only the blank stone walls of my self-imposed exile.

So the internet, far from a luxury for me, is essential. But I had to fight hard to get it. It took more than six months, and the last week or so, things were dire to the point that I had no internet, no data left on my mobile phone as I used it to tether to my computer for internet, and was running short on texts. The walls were closing in, and I realised again just how isolated and alone I am, how quiet things get, without it. I am SO relieved to be back on air.

If it wasn’t for my eating disorder I wouldn’t have the financial constraints on  my life that I do. I would be working and earning a decent amount, or at least more than the pension. I wouldn’t have the costs occured during binges or needing so many meds – the bill at times can be around $75 a week. I wouldn’t be needing to pay thousands in cat boarding fees every time I went into hospital. I wouldn’t have wasted thousands on taxis over the years when I was unable to physically get home due to weakness or imminent collapse. And so much more. Most of all, I wouldn’t be with the public trustee and having to fight to get things that I consider neccessities.

So I’ve been thinking a lot more about this whole situation lately – and with the support of some very close and wonderful friends – I am applying to come off the public trustee. This is a terrifying thought – much as I hate them, after all these years I don’t trust myself to manage my money. I feel like I have totally forgotten how. I’m scared that I’ll binge it all away immediately. But I have support I never had in the past. I have options I didn’t have like direct debit for bills. And I have come a long way in many ways including, I’m a heck of a lot more mature than back then. So I’m finally taking the leap. First step is applying for a tribunal hearing, collecting the paperwork necessary, and showing them that I can make decisions myself now. Then… I don’t really know. But hey, I know now that I can deal with it.

So, this blog entry began as a way to explain why I haven’t been online as much in past weeks and not at all the previous week – I certainly do ‘tangents’ well hey?

In other news – therapy is going well. And I’m just plodding along, at times just hanging on tight -because that’s sometimes all we can do.

Next week – in eight days actually – I’m going to Melbourne!  A long anticipated visit to a very dear friend – she’s going to show me her beautiful Victoria, and then we are driving up to New South Wales to attend a camping festival..  I’m so excited. And so terrified! I haven’t been camping since I was in school – I loved camping, but have no idea any more how it’s done… okay that sounds strange. When I was a schoolkid, life came a lot more naturally to me. And I didn’t have an eating disorder to deal with. Any trip away from home is extremely difficult for me because of the eating disorder. I have no idea how I’m going to go when camping – but it’s going to be a great opportunity to find out. I hope so much that I’m able to fully participate – and I’m going to try my best. I intend to enjoy campfire meals, toasted marshmallows, exploring the surrounds. I’m taking my art stuff and going to be doing a lot of just drawing what’s around me. A lot of reflecting and journalling. Chilling out. Reconnecting with nature. And at night – after all these years of city living, I’m going to be able to stargaze again without city lights for miles and miles. I’ve been told it’s amazing. I can’t wait.

Bring it on

Ironically it’s going to mean another week or more away from technology – there is not even phone service where we are going – but this is going to be a good sort of tecnology-free period!

Thank you so much to everyone who has commented and been reading – I have a heap of your comments that I’m dying to answer and just haven’t gotten the chance to yet. I have been reading them  - and I’m always extremely grateful, touched by your support, and intrigued by your views. Thank you for being patient with me while I’m so scarce lately! I also look forward to slowly catching up with your blogs – I’ve missed so much of what you are all up to and what you are writing about – and I’m deeply sorry for that.

Hoping you are all well! Thank you for reading

(Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Sleepover Parties

… are something that eating disorders exclude you from.

It certainly excluded me from weddings, parties, anything.

Never again!

Today I’m apologising to you, my readers, and to the brilliant bloggers whose posts I love to read, for being awfully behind in my commenting and responding – for a GOOD reason -

I’ve just been enjoying a sleepover with a very special friend – and it was awesome. Absolutely awesome.

It’s really lovely to be doing some things that are ‘normal’ – but for me, so, so special.

PS this is the face that greeted me on going to bed last night – her puppy!

Don’t tell Shalimar!! She was fine, though. One night alone (with plenty of food and water and toys) is still a far cry from the days she spent months at a time in pet motels. She was absolutely fine.

I think she’s dreaming of driving a car or dancing a jig..

Have you reclaimed anything that you lost to being unwell?

(Featured image source)

Meeting Our Own Expectations – How Our Past Can Affect Our Destiny.

Please be aware that this post is based on my own interpretation of Schema-focussed CBT theory as someone who has only recently been introduced to it – I am not educated in psychology, and I am definitely very capable of making mistakes and getting things mixed up. If this interests you, please ask someone who is trained in Psychology for more information!  In the meantime, here is a very succinct overview. 

I loved your responses to my last post about what would be in your Christmas survival kits!  I especially loved the humour you all used, and found it interesting how many of us in some way worked at making Christmas a good experience for those around us.  It gave me a lot to think about.

Most of us seem to feel pressured by the expectations of others in some way at Christmas time.

It’s a running theme for many of us throughout our  lives.  Since I became a blogger, I have met quite a few people with eating disorders who do NOT struggle with being people pleasers, with putting everyone else before them and with living up to expectations both real and imagined.  But the majority of people I have met with eating disorders seem to struggle with this to some degree. I know I do, I always have.

Maybe it is something to do with certain personality types being more susceptible to eating disorders?

Meeting expectations is one of the reasons I’ve been feeling so stressed lately – and have felt stressed for most of my life actually. I tend to agonise about things for days, weeks even, before they are meant to happen. I catastrophise things in my mind, wondering if the worst possible things could happen, if I will ‘fail’, if people will have reason to be disappointed in me, angry, disgusted.  The more I worry, the more likely I am to have a bad time of it when the actual event takes place – because my anxiety levels have gotten so out of control, and I’ve convinced myself that it’s going to be awful.

How many of us do this? How many of us don’t even give ourselves a chance by believing we will be failures – and then somehow ensuring that this is true? If anything illustrates the power our beliefs have over our lives, it’s seeing how being convinced that we will fail can actually make our belief come true.

Working with my therapist has helped me a fair bit with this sort of thing already. I’ve just learnt about Schemas, as we are going to undertake Schema-focussed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. 

An early maladaptive schema (EMS) has been defined by Jeffrey Young as ‘a broad pervasive theme or pattern regarding oneself and one’s relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree’.  Schemas are extremely stable and enduring patterns, comprising of memories, bodily sensations, emotions, cognitions and once activated intense emotions are felt.  When a person has an EMS like abandonment, they have all the memories of early abandonment, the emotions of anxiety or depression, which are attached to abandonment, bodily sensations and thoughts that people are going to leave them.  An Early Maladaptive Schema, therefore, is the deepest level of cognition that contains memories and intense emotions when activated. (source)

My understanding of  Schema is that they are our core beliefs about ourselves and about the world.  Formed in our formative years, they reflect how our experiences have affected us and shaped us. If  ”seeing the world through rose coloured glasses” is a phrase used to describe experiencing life as though it’s filtered through an extra optimistic viewpoint, I imagine that our schemas describe how we experience all of our lives through the filters created by our experiences.

Things happen to us in life that we have no control over whatsoever – this we know for sure. But how much of what happens to us, even as adults with the power to decide what we do and who we associate with – do we actually influence through our own core beliefs? I think we could be surprised by how much of our own destiny we shape, unconsciously.

For example, one of my early maladaptive schemas was identified as being Defectiveness/Shame.  The handout my therapist gave me described it as “The feeling that one is defective, bad, unwanted, inferior, or invalid in important respects or that one would be unlovable to significant others if exposed. May involve hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection and blame; self-consciousness, comparisons, and insecurity around others; or a sense of shame regarding one’s perceived flaws. These flaws may be private (eg selfishness, angry impulses, unacceptable sexual desires) or public (eg undesirable physical appearance, social awkwardness).” (source)

That could have been written about me!

We also have individual coping styles, which explains why two children who experience the same abusive home, might grow up to be totally different. It certainly explains why I have become the person I have, while my siblings have if anything, destructive and violent, and yet quite successful in their public lives.

Generally, there are three overall coping styles - Overcompensation (Support), Avoidance, and Surrender – and a list of coping responses for each of those styles. All of the maladaptive coping responses listed under Schema Avoidance jump at me straight off .

Applying them to my sense of shame and defectiveness, I absolutely tend to withdraw and strive to be as autonomous as I can be. I’m scared that people will reject me if they realise I’m as awful as I am. I have learnt that the only person in my life I can ever depend on is myself – and I tend to push people away first before they can abandon me.

I’ve long sought distraction through becoming engrossed in reading, to the point that teachers used to confiscate my books to stop me reading TOO MUCH.  Through dancing, and through excessive exercising, and when all is too much, through dissociation.

I’ve addictively self-soothed through restricting my food, through bingeing and purging, through exercising, through self-harming.

And psychological withdrawl pretty much sums ME up. As young as I can remember, I’ve been withdrawn into my own bubble through dissociation, through my books, through whatever way I can.

I also exhibit Schema Surrender – I give in to others, am passive, a people pleaser, surrender to the wishes of others, and definitely do all I can to avoid conflict.  I am compliant, and despite my efforts to push others away, am also pretty dependant.

All of these coping responses have had the effects of isolating me from other people. They have kept me safe, sure, but they have been a thick wall that traps me, too. I have struggled to learn to trust others, to have actual relationships with other people, to even talk to other people (I spent several of my teenage years uttering a total of two, maybe three words a day.)

I can see now, how my absolute certain belief that I was inferior, disgusting, wrong, that people would be disgusted and want nothing to do with me if they knew what I was ‘really like’ – shaped my reality into just that. My coping responses to these beliefs pushed people away from me and ensured that I was always the odd one out.

I can also see, with great hope, that over the more recent years, with my growing ability to believe in the inherent goodness and sincerity of people, and that they can like and accept me – based on their actual treatment of me – how I have started to move away from being so isolated and stuck in those patterns. It does give me hope, because it shows that even before I started learning all about this, and despite those beliefs still being extremely ingrained, I was able to change my behaviours and therefore, actually start to change my destiny.

The Fiona you know, through this blog, the Fiona who has good, close friends, who despite her fears, can actually interact socially and take part in things more and more – is a girl who dared to trust blindly, based on a bit of positive evidence that was tiny compared to a lifetime of rejection and hurt.  I have a heck of a long way to go, because I still tend to hide, most of my social interaction is through technology, and the people I see on a daily basis are mostly my workers/helpers. But in a way that only people who have themselves experienced these issues would ever understand, just that I can talk to people, enjoy their company, feel like a human being when with them – it’s a huge improvement over how I’ve been for much of my life.

I dared. And I keep daring – and every time I do, I prove to myself yet again, that my fears don’t have to be real – and that I do have some control over my destiny by what I do right now.

Can you see ways in which your beliefs have shaped your destiny?

When reading about Schema-focussed CBT on the pages I’ve linked through in this post, do any of the schemas, coping styles, and coping responses sound especially true for you? 

(Image sources: 1, 2, 3)

If You Could Have A Say…

For almost 15 years, I had no say about when I was admitted to hospital, or what happened if I needed to be admitted. I had no say in any decisions to do with my health.

Recently, I’ve been offered a little bit of that power – an opportunity that I think many of us who are fighting eating disorders and caught up in the health system would give anything to have.

As I am a ‘complex patient’, my case manager is now required to have plans drawn up for every aspect of my management. Usually my admissions have been planned – I’ve been becoming too unwell, or medically I’ve become unstable, my case manager and/or GP has contacted the ED specialist unit at the hospital, and because they know me, it’s pretty much been a case of “Okay, she’s coming in at x time, see you then.” All that’s remained has been for them to bring me in.

However there have been emergencies and crises, as there will be when someone is battling a long chronic illness that has so many volatile aspects to it.  And without a written plan in my files, they have been difficult and even traumatic. There was the time I was taken to hospital by a case worker who was standing in, for chest pains. The registrar didn’t check me out – instead, he gave me a few lectures about how people with eating disorders are manipulative, spoilt brats who just want attention – and told me to go home and eat a sandwich. I really did have heart problems – ended up in hospital with them a few days later – but that experience is just one of many similar, not just for myself, but for friends I’ve talked to.

It’s scary that many of us will not go to emergency under our own steam, because of the fear of being treated with no understanding, even being accused of attention seeking or malingering. Often staff in emergency aren’t aware of what to actually test for medically – beyond basics like electrolyte levels, and even that at times has been something that if I haven’t reminded them of, would have been overlooked. One of my friends who had to attend for her self harm was stitched up with no anesthetic, because obviously, she wanted the pain, right? (No, she didn’t, and it traumatised her.)

So having a chance to control some of what happens in this situation is truly an opportunity I don’t want to waste. It also might go to abate some of the fears I have of ever being in hospital again – that I will always be at the mercy of others, never have a say, just be reduced to a body, because I have a mental illness and therefore I don’t get a say.

As far as my health goes, my case manager is going to help me take out an Advanced Health Care Directive. It’s a good idea to have it done now, and have it signed off by a doctor to say that I was mentally able to make my own informed decisions at the time that it was made. When I’ve been in hospital, there has often been a point at which things have been too much – too traumatic or too painful – and I’ve wanted to be able to say “No more”. Indeed, I’ve begged them at times to let me die – because at that time, there was truly not much hope, I had tried everything and tried it many times. I was tired, I was broken, now medical help had just become more abuse – and I wanted them to just be kind to me now. But because I was mentally ill – I was told that I didn’t know what was best for me and was incapable of making those decisions.

Recently in the  news there have been two women who have been in this situation – and it went to court. One woman was granted the right to not be fed – (trigger warning, stupid cliché anorexia photo) despite wanting to live. The other was ordered to be fed against her will – despite there being no hope for her and suffering the medical and psychological effects of years of a long, hard battle. Today, I am glad that I was kept alive despite wanting then to just be allowed to die. Because I’m still here, and I have a chance. One of my past doctor always used to say to me “While there is life, there is hope.” And she’s right.

A now long gone friend of mine was resuscitated and her chest was smashed from the efforts, she lived in agony for a while before she died. That terrifies me, because I have severe osteoporosis so the chances are the same would happen to me. I do have heart complications, according to my case manager, so it could happen. I wanted to have a Do Not Resuscitate order at one stage, was knocked back because of the ‘mentally impaired’ thing. NOW, I can have it if I want it. But I’m scared of not being resuscitated, too. As much as I struggle to live, struggle to want to live when hurting and fighting 24/7, I’m scared of dying too. Who isn’t? The thought of having a heart attack and them NOT trying to save my life is too scary to think about.

I want to be able to decide when to no longer push to save me. When I’m to be considered ‘end of life’. That is also such a hard decision. When is anorexia ‘end of life’? Who gets to make that decision? Nobody with an eating disorder should ever get to that stage but it does happen. When you are in organ failure, for example, it’s a bit silly to try and keep saving you, especially if it’s painful and traumatic.

I definitely want to specify that I not be restrained ever again. That isn’t worth it, and I’d truly rather die. I don’t know if that would be acceptable on an AHD, but I can try.

Generally, I get to have instructions to emergency staff about what is helpful for me, and what is not. For example – not to say “Go eat a sandwich” to me! My case manager is putting in details of what medical things to test for (in case they don’t know, but seriously, I hope it becomes compulsory for all front line nurses, doctors, and any other professional health staff to be taught about eating disorders, since they are often the first point of contact for sufferers and how they handle the situation can heavily influence the sufferer’s attitude towards accepting help in the future.)

Very importantly, I can have instructions to care for Shalimar. I’ve always been scared that she would be left alone to fend for herself if I was suddenly unwell and none of my treatment team were around to arrange for her to be cared for. She is to me, my ‘child’ – and she is reliant on me in as many ways as a child.

I’m struggling to come up with what things I would like to have on my plan. I was shocked to be given the chance to have input, and thankful that I have a chance to influence what the future might hold, before I got to a point where my opinion no longer counted – NOT that I ever intend to revisit that state of health again. The most important thing here, is that this is a safety net for me in many ways.

What would you choose to have on an emergency admission care plan? For both medical and psychiatric emergencies? What would you want the people who are helping you to do or not do? Are there any triggers that you would benefit from the staff knowing in advance and so avoiding?

Would you ever take out an Advanced Health Care Directive or do you have one? And what would you have on that directive? What is your biggest fear health-wise?

Thank you for your input! I am so interested to see what you all think.

(Image source – I love this picture, and I love this verse.)

Let Go, Walk Away.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been able to distance myself from the people who have hurt me more and more. This hasn’t been easy, surprisingly.

You would think that if someone hurt you, it would be the easiest thing in the world to get as far as you can away from them and stay there. After all, we have an instinct that keeps us alive – to flee from bad people (or to stay and fight them, but even the most fighting spirit knows when they are beaten). It seems that this is overridden, however, by another survival instinct – bonding.

My psychologist explained to me that human beings are actually the only species that is completely helpless from birth for a significant period. This surprised me – I mean, kittens are born blind, for example, and baby birds seem fairly helpless. But no, she assured me, they become able to fend for themselves very fast indeed, and if they are pushed out of the nest or abandoned, they can survive.

Humans, when abandoned or attacked as babies, cannot.

So one of our earliest and most important survival instincts is bonding with our parents, especially our mothers. We want her to love us and bond to us. We want her to care about us – because our life is completely at her mercy. If our mother doesn’t love us or bond to us, she might not want to look after us and we will die.

This hit home hard for me. For my entire life, my mother, my older sister, my brother – they have all hurt me continuously. With my older sister, I very early on accepted that she was ‘not a good person’ and ‘dangerous’ and to keep awares – but even my deep down belief that people – especially family – are inherently good and are on my side led me to constantly letting my guard down with her and being wounded by her again.

My brother and I were very close when we were little, but as he grew older he became more and more violent. I kept on forgiving him. I never forgot that childhood bond, and I suppose that because I knew he had been subject to sexual abuse at the hands of our older sister too, he was dealing with his own stuff in the only way he knew how, which obviously was outward, whereas mine was inward. So I didn’t really blame him, and it was hard to hold it against him much past the actual acts of violence. He’s also shown redeeming qualities – he tried hard to be there for me at several points over the years I was struggling with the ED, and he also rescued a pile of things from our childhood home and mailed them to me in a few batches. The memories were overwhelming and it was a truly precious gesture and one I’m forever thankful for.  (My mother would not allow me to even see my own photos, certificates, yearbooks etc when we were growing up, and I left behind pretty much everything I ‘owned’ when I left.) 

My mother. How to even begin to talk about my mother. A very complicated woman and a very unwell one. Or insane. Or just evil? It’s hard to think of your own mother as evil. I can easily see without a doubt that my older sister is extremely evil – but with my mother, well, she’s very good at appearing ‘nice’. The harm she causes is more underhand, sly. But yes, I can look at it and see that in most cases, she truly meant to cause that harm, whether she will admit that to herself or not (or to anyone else, ever.  Because my family in their eyes, are absolute f*cking saints.)

My mother has absolutely devastated me with her actions towards me many times. And yet, I gave her a pass, every time. I kept on going back. I couldn’t believe that my own mother could possibly mean harm to me. After all, mothers are supposed to love and protect their children, aren’t they?

Sadly it doesn’t always work that way.

It took me years to understand this, to accept it, and to be able to stop wishing that it was different. Even after I realised and accepted that my mother had no love for me and at many times actually meant me harm, I found it so difficult to stop thinking that maybe I could change it. Had I not been loveable enough? Was there something about myself I could do differently? How could I be different enough to please her? Maybe both of us could change. We might not have had the best relationship so far, but many people work hard on their relationships as adults, and become if not friends or close, at least friendly, right?

I tried all that. For years. I tried everything I could think of. And nothing got better. It was a truly toxic relationship. I couldn’t do right by her, but not just that, she didn’t CARE. She didn’t care what happened to me, she didn’t care if I died. She didn’t care enough to want to know who her daughter actually was as a person, she just wanted another possession that she could manipulate and control and create drama with to satisfy her own warped wishes.

I also felt like a traitor. These people, they are my family. The people with whom I share blood. Despite the harm they have done and the harm they wish on me, they kept me alive during my growing up years. My mother educated me, clothed me, fed me, took me to ballet – that’s something many kids never get. And I’m forever grateful for that. (To a degree – my mother was also very often negligent and cruel to me, witholding even basic necessities.)

So how can I just reject them? Turn my back on them and walk away – forever. Not just for a while, not just creating distance – completely cutting ties. Forever.

As much as I loved my mother (despite not actually liking her as a person – there is a difference and I knew that very young) I had to accept that having her in my life, having any of them in my life, was only destroying me.

I realise now it’s the only way I can ever find peace and perhaps healing from this. With them in my life, I was constantly being hurt and upset and never had a chance to put things behind me. It was constantly there, being raked over again like raking open a wound that’s trying to heal.

I started cutting ties over a year ago. Slowly. Because I knew I would never be able to just rip myself away. And because it’s hard. Even now, I feel regrets and tinges of sadness and panic, all the time. What if they have noticed I’ve vanished from their lives, and are hurt, think I never loved them? What if they decide I’m an ungrateful brat (well they pretty much already always have said that – so nothing much would be different.) 

And then, there’s my little sister. She’s not the same as they are. I don’t think she realises just what they are truly like. I don’t think she believes how much they have hurt me, especially I don’t think she would ever believe my brother has hurt me. And I think she hates me for even suggesting it.

She hates me for a number of things. For always being unwell. For not being able to cope with my dad dying and his funeral without bingeing and purging at night in secret, which led to me desperately stealing binge food. And so, for getting caught shoplifting on the day of his funeral (something I thought I’d kept to myself and that they didn’t know. Something I have never forgiven myself for, and never will.)  For ‘using my eating disorder as a reason to sit around and be lazy and not work’ and ditto with the abuse and the rapes. For making everything ‘about me’ despite me trying so hard to make it about anyone BUT me and hide my own problems for them. For just being a complete failure as a sister I guess. For ‘not loving her enough’ to get better (and if only she knew how hard I tried, and how much I hated myself for not being able to do it for her since I couldn’t do it for me.)

I wonder if she remembers how close we used to be. I don’t think she does, and I don’t think she cares. She’s completely cut me off and ignores me completely. I have tried so hard, in every way I can think of to try, and it’s been rejected. I have been rejected, and in many ways, hurtfully and rudely. I know she has her own issues – indeed her own mother talked to me about how hurtfully she’d treated her, too – but it stings and it’s heartbreaking and there isn’t anything more I can do about it. It’s her choice.

My little sister is my biggest fear in cutting off my other family. I’m scared that one day she might come around and give me another chance, but there will be no way of her finding me. And the more distance I put between us all,the harder it is for me to find her, even on facebook, now. I’m scared that she will think that I didn’t love her enough, didn’t care about her, when I disappeared. That I didn’t want to be involved in her life when in fact the opposite was true. It hurts, it really deeply hurts.

It’s been a while now. I haven’t spoken to any family members since last year. I didn’t tell them when I moved away and I went silent on the electoral rolls and discontinued my main phone. I’m about to adopt a legal alias in preparation for changing my name, change my mobile phone number, and I might close my facebook and create a new one to just distance myself from the web trails that account has made. I’m planning to move interstate in the end, hopefully sooner rather than later. My point is, I’m moving closer to this all the time, and my chances of ever getting to know and maybe even be friends with my little sister again are diminishing.

And yet, if I hold on, just in case, I’ll truly never be free. No hope of peace. No hope of healing.

If you love someone, set them free. If they return on their own, they are yours, if they don’t, they never were (~ Richard Bach)

<– I hate that quote. But all I can do now is accept it, and live despite it. Focus on the positives, that I have people who truly love me, truly accept me, and would never dream of treating me the way my own family have. I have my beloved Shalimar, who is my ‘everything’. I have hope again, as I rebuild my life little step by little step. There is so much out there for me to do, so many places to go, people to be with, I think the person I most need to set free in my life is myself. 

(Image source 1, 2)

Have you loved and lost? 

A Little, Empty Life.

One of the hardest things about my life as the eating disorder has shaped it, is that it really is a very small, self-centred, empty life. It’s hard to admit that, and hurtful when others say it, but that’s the reality. You can’t have an eating disorder AND a life. You just can’t.

I’m sure most people with an eating disorder have tried to at some stage. Many probably  still have a ‘life’ of sorts, for now. When you are in the earlier stages, and are yet to experience the full devastation it can wreak on every part of your existence, it can be difficult to imagine that it could bring you to such a grinding halt. Also, some people who have had their eating disorders for a long time have a ‘semblance’ of a life – they have had to learn to live around it or with it – work to support themselves, for example – but it’s just a resemblance from the outside that shatters pretty quickly under gentle poking around. It’s not really life when you barely scrape through each day going through the motions and pretty much become a robot. Wake up, eating disorder stuff and work, go to sleep (or toss and turn if you are one of the many with insomnia). Same the next day. And the next. And pretending on a daily basis to be ‘fine’ in order to be professional at work is exhausting and isolating.

My career was going to be a professional dancer. I’d already come a long way in just a few years, and it was looking like it could be a reality. I had the talent, I had the perseverance and the drive to push myself beyond the pain and constantly keep working beyond ‘normal’ limits to keep achieving in order to use that talent. I’d also had a lot of really good luck that enabled me to have opportunities that most people never get.

Having an eating disorder meant I threw all that away. Years of hard work, of actual blood, sweat and tears – just thrown away. All for nothing. My physical health declined so quickly after I fell over the edge from sub-clinical disordered eating into a full blown disorder that I didn’t even know what was happening until after the fact – in hindsight it’s obvious. At the time, I didn’t even realise that I was sick, and I genuinely thought I had a huge weight problem. I was also in denial, in pain, traumatised and suffering from PTSD, dissociated all the time, and irrational. I genuinely believed that if I lost weight, my problems would be fixed. Even when the majority of those problems had nothing to do with my weight or my body.

Today that doesn’t make sense at all. I can see it’s irrational.  But back then, I couldn’t. Even when I’d lost too much weight, been kicked out of the performance strand in my dancing course at university, and was constantly passing out, and people were remarking on not only my weight loss but now that I’d gone too far and was looking sick,  I still firmly believed that all that would be solved when I ‘got my dancer’s body back again’ which to me at the time, meant losing weight.

Totally ZERO insight. Not a clue.

It all went downhill very fast after that point. A valuable lesson that I have learnt from this  is that it’s so important to have activities and goals that are meaningful and purposeful in your life – to have a reason for getting up in the morning, a reason for being alive at all. A reason to not give in completely and let the eating disorder suck the last bit of life out of you.  The more that was taken from me – not just ballet, but ability to think in order to do the academic classes at university, to have a conversation with people, the stamina and thinking in order to keep doing the volunteer work I’d always done, the steady hand and imagination to keep doing my drawings and paintings, the imagination to write my poetry, and the energy and self-esteem to keep up with friends – the more of it I lost, the more of myself I lost, too.

After leaving home as a teen, I’d become fiercely independent. I’d lived to that point with every aspect of my life completely controlled – right down to what I could think,  what I wore, read, and did with my spare time. My determination to survive in the ‘big bad world’ was such that I strived to budget and manage money, pay bills and look after my commitments without failing. To get myself around the city despite it being unfamiliar, to find my own housing and fend for myself. I did fail to keep myself safe – since I fell out of the family frying pan into the fire of Wanker the rapist and stalker – but for the first few years I did quite well in everything else, especially considering that I had to learn a lot of basic life skills from scratch. In a home where you are brainwashed and tightly controlled, you don’t learn these skills, even when you are actually performing them – because you aren’t ‘practising’ them so much as you are ‘obeying’, like a robot, every command. Thus I had been preparing and cooking family meals, cleaning, washing up, laundering, working in the yard etc for much of my childhood, but found I didn’t even know where to begin on any of these tasks when I’d needed to do them on the outside.

So to lose my independence to the eating disorder was a huge blow for me. And I lost it ALL. I had no say about my life. My finances were taken over by a state trustee and a state-appointed guardian made decisions about my body. As I grew physically less able, Home and Community Care moved in to help me to get out of bed, shower and dress, go to appointments, look after the housework, encourage me to come on a drive to the park or just get out, and most importantly, help me look after my cat, Shalimar. By this point, I’d had her a few years, and I still can’t imagine living without her, now. We have been almost inseperable since the first hour we spent together. Almost, because with me constantly in and out of hospital, Shalimar was in and out of the pet motel. Thankfully a really lovely man who ran the facility I finally settled on for her, cared for her personally and sensitively – giving her cuddles and walkies and treats. But it wasn’t a life for her, and it was the thing I most regretted about being sick.

At my sickest, I even had to be bathed, toileted, and fed. The indignity of it, especially when some of the nurses or aides who are doing it are much younger than you, really stings. I felt so helpless.

At that point, to look back at the strong, determined, courageous, talented and highly achieving young woman I had once been – was heartbreaking and very bizarre. No way in the world had I ever imagined such a future for myself. I’d aimed for the sky, and beyond, back then! I had believed that if I truly hoped and dreamed for something, I would achieve it – no doubts – because hoping and dreaming to me was synonymous with going out of my way, pulling out all the stops, not stopping at all until I’d gotten there. In fact, I’d made a point of always setting goals that were higher than I (and most other people who knew me, too) imagined I could ever achieve, because my will and my drive was such that I usually ended up surpassing the more ‘realistic’ goals I’d had that way, achieving more than had I just aimed for the them in the first place.

And here I was now – helpless. Pathetic, weak, miserable and helpless.

Eating disorders will strip even the brightest people of their every hope and dream. It will leave no aspect of your life untouched. You will constantly drop to a new low, feel like nothing could possibly get worse than ‘this’ – and then fall again even further. Nobody escapes this. Even for those who somehow hang on to some semblance of sanity and function for a longer time than usual – it will crumble around you in the end. Because it’s impossible to maintain something that is the very antithesis of LIFE and LIVE.

Many people with eating disorders have to start from scratch when they start to turn things around. The little basics of life have to be learnt all over again, but it goes far deeper. Many of us find ourselves in the body of a complete stranger. If we ever knew ‘who’ we were in the first place, we don’t even begin to know that now. We have lost being a person to become basically a host body to a parasite. Interests, hopes, dreams – they all have to be found all over again. And in the jaded, weary aftermath, it’s difficult to find the cares for that stuff, it seems so trivial compared to the battle we have been wading through.

But it’s important. Essential. You can’t just rip the eating disorder from the person and expect them to be okay. They have nothing. You have ripped away their ‘suit of armour’ and their skin, too, leaving them a quivering helpless mess of jelly and innards that will collapse uselessly in a pile. The way you need to do  this is to replace each old supporting and protecting structure for a new one, before taking the old one away. A new activity here, a new interest there, gradually ease the person from leaning totally on the old to shifting more and more weight onto the new – and hopefully when you can finally take eating disorder from that part of their life completely they will stay standing and keep going.

It’s a long slow process. It can’t be rushed.

In many ways, I’m the same person as I once was. Yet, in many ways, I’m completely different, and I do feel like I’m living with a stranger in the same body every single day – not to forget that my body feels like someone else’s too.  My rebuilding process has involved me being broken down to the very most basic, shattered slivers of myself as I once was. Hopefully this time around, the foundation built will be sturdy and I will be stronger for it. Ballet, volunteer work, reading, gardening, interacting with friends much more, art, and spending precious time with my beloved Shalimar all make up parts of the scaffolding of my new person. And with the therapist in trauma therapy, we are chipping away at the frozen, tormented bits to hopefully reveal and set free the little abused kid so that she can finally grow up and leave the past behind her.

You are not the exception to the rule.

Even if you still have a life, if you have an eating disorder, you will not escape this loss of life. I promise you – you simply will not, can not. And that is why I tell this story. My message to you is, get out now. I read of people asking if they are ready to attempt to get better, are they ‘sick enough’? Do they want to let go of losing weight, or the illusion of control, or of whatever pretty carrot the eating disorder has promised? Maybe there is a special occasion they want to be thin for first, or studies to be finished, or someone to meet. Some goal to have achieved, or some point to have reached where they will ‘know’ they now are ready to change.

My question is – what makes you think you will even have those choices? Or that when you get to whatever the goalpost is, you will be able to change, then?

I listen to someone telling me that they want to time their recovery for after a vacation period, when the harsh reality is that if they don’t start fighting now, they won’t even have that vacation period, and they certainly won’t have a choice about when to be plunged into treatment or hospital. I listen to someone telling me that they have to finish the year’s studies first, and wonder if they realise that if they don’t start fighting NOW, not only will they not finish the year’s studies, they may lose the chance to complete the entire course. I hear someone saying they can’t take time from their job to fight for their lives, and wonder if they realise that it’s take the time, or become so unwell they have no choice about losing it, and maybe not even be ever able to work again. And I listen to  someone wanting to be thinner for some occasion and wish she realised that it’s too high a price to pay for that – this disease leaves you crippled and weak, even bedridden, and in the end, DEAD, and believe me that’s not a good look for anyone.

We don’t have tomorrow. None of us has tomorrow. Or next week. Definitely not next year. We only have today. We can only do what we can do right now. And every moment that we don’t fight for our lives against ED, is potentially a moment in the future where we no longer have a life at all.

Even if you take just one small step today – challenge yourself in just one little way, change just one little thing – to fight your eating disorder – it’s a chance you now have. It’s a little bit of yourself and your life and your future that you are claiming, now when you are still able to claim it.

Keep fighting. 

(Image source)

Was It My Choice to have an Eating Disorder?

I don’t agree that it’s a choice to have an eating disorder. Nobody asked the little four year old me if I wanted one. Nobody gave me a choice. I didn’t want to hide my food or refuse to drink. I was hungry, and I liked to eat. I’d never thought about my body in terms other than “This is me playing!” and that it could wear dress up costumes, could run, jump, dance… I didn’t know anything about eating disorders or weight loss. I’d never even set eyes on a glossy magazine. I idolised my mother and father, and wanted only to be the best ‘good little girl’ I could be so they would be happy with me and love me more, so it wasn’t about having power over them or defying them, either.

As I grew older, still completely clueless about eating disorders, still without a care when it came to weight, I still never had a choice about the eating disorder. There was this thing that just was, in my mind. It was just there, as though it was born with me when I was, and grew as I grew, until it reached a point where I could no longer avoid being influenced by it. This thing told me, no, demanded that I not eat, that I exercise more. I didn’t even really hear the demands at first – later it was like something screaming inside my head. There never was a choice not to do those things – they were what had to be done, and there were no other options open to me. Not a single one.

And so, I obeyed it. It just had to be done, and I just did it. Hunger was unpleasant, pain was unpleasant, but disobeying this thing, that was far worse.

Have you ever felt like you are so trapped that you could thrash and beat at the walls, scream your head off, do everything you could to change your situation and you would be simply wasting your energy and breath? Known that for certain – without a doubt? That was what it was for me. And if I did try to beat it, the consequences always dissuaded me from trying again.

It wasn’t until I was at least 18 years old that I even began to learn about what eating disorders were, or accept that I might have one. You find it very hard to believe you have a disorder when you are just doing something you HAVE to do, that you have no choice not to do. A disorder should go against the grain. A disorder should cause more distress than it alleviates – this was the other way around at that time. To not obey caused instant, lasting, intense distress. To listen, to fulfil the demands on me – I found that soothing. Calming. It made me feel invincible. It reminded me that I was strong enough to withstand the hurt being meted out by the people in my life at that time, because I was used to pain. I thrived on pain. And pain made me stronger. This proved it to me, because my dancing went from strength to strength the more I exercised, and the more I exercised, the less time I had for eating. To feel I was dancing better left me on a high, along with the cognitive and physical effects of starvation, I was in a constant giddy, light headed state of ‘not being there’.

And I didn’t want to be here, there, or anywhere at that time. I’d been hurt so much, and the hurting never stopped. Every where I turned, I was wounded. Like a little creature seeking to just survive, I crawled away to hide best that I could while still being there amongst my abusers. I crawled away inside myself. They saw my shell, they no longer saw me.

 

Indeed, when I left that hell that I grew up in, not a single member of my family actually knew who I was. Not a single one of them knew the real Fiona, only the outer carcass, only the robot who simply humoured their demands and acquiesced to their ways, because it wasn’t worth the extra fighting to do otherwise. Who learnt to never show them what actually mattered to her, lest it became a target too, and used against her.

In all these years, I never chose to have the eating disorder. Not once did I consciously choose to lose weight. I never chose to restrict my eating. I never chose to not allow myself to eat or to drink. I never chose to force myself to overexercise. I did not have a choice at all – ever. Those things were simply things that were as natural and unconscious to me as breathing, as my heart beating. We don’t think about and choose every breath we take or every beat of our hearts. And yet, we breathe. Our hearts beat. The eating disorder ate away at me from the inside out. It was never something I thought about, wanted, or chose.

There are six year old children needing treatment for anorexia in growing numbers. Eight year olds. Nine year olds. Ask a six year old why they want to lose weight? Will they tell you they want to be a model, or on the cover of the latest Vogue magazine? Will they tell you that it helps them to cope with an uncertain world, or with fear or pain, or that it makes them feel strong and in control? That they do it to manipulate people around them?

I can pretty much promise you they will say none of those things. Because they never chose to have their eating disorders either. For them, as it was for me, the eating disorder was something that they were born with, a pre-existing predisposition, determined by genetics, not by them. And it lies there, waiting, under the surface. It lies there like a crocodile under the skin of a silent lake, only its eyes above water, waiting for something tasty and alive to wander into it’s path. A menacing, hidden danger, no less a threat for its temporary invisibility. And at some point, life conspired to throw them into a set of conditions that triggered off that lurking monster, brought it out of hiding and into full battle.

All that waiting made for a very hungry monster indeed.

At about 18, all that had happened – and was happening still to me – came to tipping point. I simply was no longer able to stand up against the tide, as I had fought so hard to do all those years. It knocked me down like I was nothing at all, swept me over the edge, and then I was falling. Falling into anorexia.

And I fell hard.

It was never a choice.

Years later, when I finally accepted my anorexia, accepted the bulimia that had come with it, accepted that I needed help, was out of control, was dying – then it was my choice. I had an army on my side to fight it, and it was my choice whether to join them, or to fight against them as enemies. And too many times, I did see them as foes. It took years for me to realise they came for me, not against.

I never had a choice about having an eating disorder.

But I do have a choice to fight it.

Did you choose to have an eating disorder? Or another illness or disorder?

** I will likely not be around online much for the next few days so please excuse late replies to your comments, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can – thank you for reading

Spring Memories, Spring Distractions.

I’m really loving the arrival of spring lately. Clear blue skies, sunshine, and flowers blooming. Even my neglected garden has sprung back into life, prompting me to start watering it again.  Because they had died, I’d replanted, then they died again, it’s been fun trying to work out what the heck some of the plants are!

Some are more obvious:

I’m pretty sure this is a type of lettuce, maybe Rocket or Coral.

I can’t wait for the tomatoes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some, not so much

When you plant, then replant with a random scattering of seeds, and they all decide to grow at once… good luck working out what is what!

I know there are some snow peas in there, some parsley, and possibly some kinds of basil. The rest are a mystery to me and all I can do is wait for them to grow a bit more obvious! There are flower plants in there too, so tasting the mystery plants might be a bit risky.

I did actually manage to grow flowers – but who can kill nasturtiums? These flowers are full of memories for me, they were everywhere at our place growing up.

classic Shalimar – didn’t waste any time checking it out to see if it was edible.

Although I love nasturtiums (and they ARE edible – did you know? You can eat the leaves and the flowers!) I really had to think hard about planting them, as they do tend to trigger a lot of memories for me, many of which are just not good.

Lately I’ve really been struggling with PTSD issues. More than I usually do, because it’s an ongoing problem for me. Part of this is because I’ve always been very connected to the outdoors, to nature etc – as a child more often than not I would escape to my own world that involved trees, grass, mud, watching willy wagtails and other birds, gazing at the sky, etc. So my adult life is a minefield of triggers, especially in the spring time when the natural world comes alive. This in turn is exacerbated by the fact that it’s just ‘that time of year’ when there are some pretty hard to bear anniversaries, plus the memories of things happening around those events.

Recently, a young family with kids moved into the house which has a backyard right opposite my back door. Also, a lot of backyards converge near my back door – lots of them having young kids. Every day, especially in the afternoon and early evening, the air is full of squealing and laughter, the sounds of little kids playing.  This is a truly wonderful sound that never fails to make me smile.

These days it’s more usual for kids to NOT play in the back yard, so it’s really nice to see and hear. But, for me, it’s a huge, huge trigger. Every afternoon I’ve been getting lost in flashbacks, no matter how much I try to stay in the present, remind myself I’m safe now, etc. Even good memories are all mixed up with bad. I end up losing a lot of time, or just crying my eyes out.

So I’m really glad I’m finally seeing a trauma therapist and look forward to learning how to take a lot of the pain out of this.

In the meantime, what’s worked best is trying to keep my focus on MY ‘kid’ being out there playing too. Late afternoon/early evening is the time I usually let Shalimar go out to play, while I keep an eye on her usually from inside while I do other things. I do sit out there with her sometimes, but I find it hard to just sit there for long!

She really likes it. A lot of the time she just sits. She also likes to ‘stalk’ the birds who often fly and perch just above her in the trees, and tease her!

And then I call her in for her tea, when it gets a bit close to too dark.

We’ve also been cuddling – this afternoon:

 

 

 

 

This is what’s under my covers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also have been making myself laugh – and today I thought I’d share some of the funnies with you. Today, a friend of mine was looking for halloween costumes for her little boy for playgroup. It didn’t take long for things to get hilariously cute! I think some parents must either be very hungry, or it’s just that babies can be so cute you want to eat them right up!

would you like fries with that?

Some amazing comparisons – who did it better? Let me know!

 

 

 

I think the people who made these costumes maybe should have had something to eat first! And I don’t mean the babies (or fur babies!)

See more awesome food baby costumes here!

As you can probably guess, it wasn’t long before I was looking for cat costumes, instead of baby ones. And Shalimar was NOT impressed. Especially when I thought I’d get her this one:

neither is Shalimar…

I haven’t worn a costume for years and years. Halloween has been a non-event here for most of my life, although I’ve worn some pretty amazing dance costumes.

I think I’ll be going as myself this halloween.. that could be pretty scary!

See what I’ve done here? I’ve taken the focus right off things like bad memories and flashbacks – and made myself laugh! I hope I brightened your day or night too.

Last of all, since I’m putting up a heap of pictures today, I’ll leave you with some of me – my hair is finally able to be put up in a (pathetically teeny) pony tail!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed finding the pictures for it!  Now I’m off to cuddle up with my kitty in bed again

How are you finding your spring, or your autumn, depending on where you are? What’s the best thing about it, and the worst?

Do you have a garden?

What is the best costume you have ever worn?

Have you ever celebrated Halloween – gone trick or treating, or to a costume party for example?

Image sources: 5, 7, 8, 9, 10

 

 

Deja Vu… (Wake Up, Fiona.)

Have you ever had that strong feeling that you have been here, done this, before? Lived this exact moment of time before?

Last night I had a moment of deja vu. I don’t know where I saw myself sitting here before, reading web pages on my computer, half an eye on the news on TV, one hand idly scratching Shalimar’s neck as she purred on my lap. I was looking at the TV guide open on my screen, and the shows were exactly the same as when I ‘lived this moment’ the first time’. Gosh it was eerie. I often sit at my computer while watching TV, Shalimar often sits on my lap, the TV shows are endless repeats – but it wasn’t just ‘doing the same thing’. It felt as though I’d previously viewed that exact moment of time before it happened – and it was happening right now.

I often have experienced moments of deja vu throughout my life. But along with the events of the last few days, last night took on greater meaning for me.

On Thursday morning, I woke up and tried to get ready to go to ballet classes, despite the usual amounts of fear. But I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t end up going. Instead, I sat down and wrote an email to the lady who runs the ballet school. I explained to her that I haven’t lost the plot yet, but I know I’m walking a very fine line and that I need to take a break from the ballet classes until I’ve gotten myself well again. I know I’ve lost weight – in my opinion only a little bit, but enough to matter when someone has a history of ED. Not only have I had to admit that two hours of dancing when I’m not maintaining my weight is not good, but I have become even more self conscious, and I don’t want people looking at me in skimpy clothing and freaking out! It’s been hot, and it’s only getting hotter as we roll into summer so there is no way I can hide under lots of layers during ballet classes any more.

I also don’t want to have ballet become linked with the eating disorder, since up until now it’s been a little slice of heaven – an oasis where the eating disorder has not had a chance to intrude. I want to keep it that way.

I hugely fear having made this decision though – because the way my eating disorder works is that it does strip me of things that are meaningful to me. Instead of being able to use the motivation of going back to classes to help me fight to get back to where I was (at the very least), if things were to go true to my history with ED, instead it would be a case of “You aren’t worthy of going to ballet anyway, and you aren’t going to ever dance again so just give up” and that would be the end of it – forever. ED has convinced me that my life was over and I had to die so strongly, so many times. I don’t want this to happen again.

So I compromised – the reply from the lady who runs the ballet school was “Why don’t you concentrate just on pilates class until you feel better?” and I thought this was a better plan. Pilates is very easy going, and it would mean I would at least maintain some of my rediscovered flexibility and strength until I could do ballet again too.

I sent a copy of my email to my case managers, because they are hugely supportive and I wanted them to know why I chose to do this. I didn’t want them to think that I was copping out, that I didn’t want to keep moving forward. I just didn’t think they would take it so seriously.

Yesterday morning, my Home And Community Care case manager came over for a catch up – asking how she can help me. She’s lovely and I felt a lot better after a chat with her. I’m truly lucky to have the level of support that I do, and that the people who support me as professionals do genuinely care.

At the same time, I had a text from my Mental Health case worker – wanting to see me ahead of our appointment next wednesday, to talk about things. I just assumed that she felt I might be upset and need support,  since she knows how much ballet means to me.

What happened was that I found myself being given an ultimatum – “Turn it around.” I have never seen my case manager SO intensely serious. She’s known me for ten years now, and been my case manager on and off for much of that time. She’s always been a really laid-back and good-humoured – even though she’s been with me through the best of times and the worst of times – far, far worse times. And yet, I’ve never seen her as concerned as yesterday afternoon, when she repeated those three words to me.

Bottom line is, not only do I need to take a break from ballet, but I can’t do pilates either. I’ve been advised to take a few weeks break from all of the classes (well I guess it means my decision was the right one.) I also have been advised to not see the psychologist any more – the one that I’ve only just met!

I meant to write a blog post about finally getting to see a psychologist, but I haven’t had a chance! I’ve long been needing more help with the traumas of my past – and I wasn’t getting it from Dr Headshrinker. It took a long time and much pleading, but finally I was referred to a psychologist who came recommended for doing trauma work, we did up the necessary paperwork to access her* and I made the appointment. And she is just who I need to see – I have a very good feeling about her. She ‘gets’ me. She says she can help me help myself – help me process the traumas and be able to move forward from it. So I came away from my first appointment with her feeling relieved and confident.

(*in my state of Australia, in order to access 5 sessions with a psychologist bulk billed under Medicare per year, you must have a mental health care plan drawn up with your GP. Psychologist sessions are not otherwise covered by Medicare.)

My case manager’s opinion is that it’s a pattern with me – as my anxiety and my inability to cope with the past traumas increase,  I relapse. I can’t not listen to her – she’s known me for so long and she has never been wrong so far, she’s also deeply insightful. I truly respect every single thing she says.

But I personally think that it was just rotten timing! This situation has been a long time developing, and my first psych session just happened to coincide with me no longer being able to appear ‘okay’ to others.  But my case manager has a point. Also, she added, I’m cognitively impaired, and to continue seeing the psychologist in this state would be a waste of the few sessions I can access.

It’s a stalemate on whether I’m not seeing the psychologist again for now, and this is where the ultimatum comes in. I see my case manager again on Wednesday next week, and she wants me to have ‘turned it around’ by then. I guess if I have ‘turned things around’ sufficiently, then I can go on with seeing the psychologist.

If I haven’t?

I don’t know. There are no ‘or elses‘ here, because this isn’t serious yet, this is the heads-up that if I don’t do something NOW, it WILL become serious, fast.

But I guess the ‘or else’ is the fact that I will lose EVERYTHING if I relapse fully. Everything. Including my life. And I cannot do that.

I will not do that. 

I’m fighting. 

I feel awful for letting down people who were so supportive of my progress, who have been cheering me on through all of this.  I’ve let myself down. And I’m scared. Scared, because my ED does have so much power, and it gains that power over my mind so fast. Scared, because I know how deadly this is. Scared because I know my body can’t take another relapse. Scared because I can’t take another hospital experience!

So what does the deja vu have to do with all this?

Last night, turning all these events over in my head, I realised that without a doubt, I’m in a serious position. And that it could go either way. This is a truly life-changing decision – to fight or not. And then I felt that deja vu – such a spooky moment. I can’t remember the rest of what actually happened in that slice of time that I was ‘shown’ ahead of time – but I do know that whatever I decided to do last night affected my ENTIRE LIFE.

So I know what I have to do. And this weekend I’ve been fighting hard to do it. I reached out to some of my close friends, and with their support I’ve had a good day so far with my eating and drinking.

Never let your guard down, when you are fighting an eating disorder. Never give up, either.

Sending courage and strength and hugs to all of you out there – those of you who fight this, or your own personal battles, and those of you who care for someone who does.

While there is life, there is always hope!. 

Image Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

Walking A Fine Line. Huge Trigger Warning. Even Huger TMI warning.

This post is going to contain a lot of pretty huge triggers. Weight talk, ED talk, TMI (bowel motion stuff, so click away if you are easily queasy!  But honesty is the only way for me to go here. And to be honest, I have to be completely honest. Partially ‘honest’ doesn’t actually count.

If you are not in a place where it’s safe for you in any way to read something that could be upsetting or triggering – please click away now. If you want to know what the post was about, I can tell you in more G rated wording via email if that’s what you would like, just drop me a comment on any other post, or email me if you have my address.

Still being honest – I really hate having to write this. I wanted to be a source of hope and to show people that no matter how far you fall, you can still get back up again – because that is what I did. And kept doing, for all my life. Hoping that someone else who believed it was impossible to ever come through a nightmare such as this and out the other side safe, okay, and able to actually LIVE, might see that I was actually getting there myself and give themselves another chance. Because when we give up, I think that’s the beginning of the end. Hope is so important to LIFE. It really is essential – without it, you go nowhere.

I don’t think I’m relapsing – hence the title of this post. But I do feel like I’m dangling on the precipice. I need to be very, very careful. Or I could absolutely lose my life.

A couple of weeks ago, I came down with the flu. It knocked me about, really did a number on me. Since then, I’ve never quite been able to get back to how I was with eating, with purging, with how my body actually just seems to handle food. And I have to admit, before the flu happened, I’ve always been hanging on by a thread – I’ve made no secret of the fact that I do still struggle big time with restricting and purging, and with the bingeing and purging. (Oh God I hate Anorexia, I hate Bulimia. And I hate having them both. One should be enough!)  And yet, something was different, far different than for all the years before this. I managed to maintain my weight, managed to stay out of hospital for the longest period of time ever, and have been working hard at returning function and FUN to my life!

However, I’ve long felt that my weight being stable for 2 years and 3 months was a fluke. Well my fluke is over. I’ve actually been ‘watching’ what’s happened with interest at the same time as I’ve lived this. Watching with fear, too. That fear that we feel when our mind says many different things and pulls in all different directions. Where nobody can win because it means somebody has to lose. One of the scariest things about living with Anorexia Type II has been the sheer power that my own mind can have over me, how powerless it can make me feel, and how unable to save myself when [insert sarcasm here!] ‘all I have to do’  is put food in, and not take the food out again.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve dropped about four kilograms, (8.82 pounds) without trying to lose weight or doing anything different really. I’ve always had huge shifts of fluid – chronic oedema problems will do that to you, but this isn’t oedema, this is weight. You can feel the difference when it’s weight as compared to oedema. This is not critical, it’s easily regained, but it’s left me mentally, emotionally, and physically walking that fine line – I don’t feel safe in any of those ways any more. The little bit of extra weight did big things for my ability to think and to be more rational, it also made a big difference to my physical health. I still weigh a lot more than when I used to be discharged from hospital most times – so please don’t think I’m lost – I’m not. I’m not lost, as long as I grab hold of this and steer back in the right direction right now. 

Back when I used to lose huge amounts of weight pretty much immediately after being discharged from most hospital admissions, most of it seemed to come off in the first few days. And always, always, my body seemed to announce it’s weight-dropping with (okay, TMI here, sorry, but how else can I say it?) a humungous going-to-the-toilet. I did nothing to bring it on, and I do wonder if perhaps being out of hospital and moving around a bit more rather than bedrested stimulated things. But I’d suddenly get urgent pains and have to go to the toilet – NOW. Oh crap, I’m going to shit my pants in a minute urgency. And then, it would feel like my entire insides were pouring out of me. I would just sit there and, ahem, poo and poo and poo. It just wouldn’t stop coming. I would seriously start to worry about blocking the toilet where ever I was, perhaps blocking the entire city’s sewer system and causing a state emergency. And then, when it was over, I’d sit there, limp, exhausted, feeling like a hollowed out skin. If I wasn’t home, I’d begin to panic because even getting up off the toilet suddenly required more energy and strength than I had. I’d never get that strength back, or the kilos that one long crap dumped from my body. From there, it was always down, down, down, yet again.

(Image Source)

I still think it’s ironic how this happened every time I then lost weight – because in more ways than one, my life was actually going down the toilet.

Well, this did not happen after my last hospital admission. Whatever was different, my insides stayed in me, where people’s insides are meant to be. I did have problems with IBS like symptoms – the period of such severe constipation I was investigated for possible bowel obstruction, and the bouts of diarrhoea without any known cause (I have not used laxatives for years unless you count the medically prescribed movicol when I had the constipation – which didn’t work either. In fact, I’ve not touched the coloxyl that the hospital sent home with me after my  last discharge) (WTF hospital ED ward, sending ED patients home with coloxyl?). The diarrhoea was nothing like the huge dumps – my actual insides always seemed to stay in me. (Does this even make sense? What a shitty paragraph haha.)

Oh dear. Crap. I can’t resist a lame pun, can I?

Anyway, to cut a long story short, not only have I suddenly started dropping weight, but a long crap happened. And it reminded me just how scary those long craps are to sit through (shit through?) because of how they make you feel, and how hard they are to recover from.

Okay – end poo talk! If you are still with me, you deserve a medal!

I cannot believe I’m sitting here telling the WORLD about my bowel habits. My mother would be so proud of me.

So, where to now?

Life is seriously overwhelming. And exhausting. Today, I saw my headshrink doctor, and had a bit of a “Wake up, Fiona!” from him. He sat me down and opened up the session with “You’ve lost weight” followed by a lecture about how nobody but myself could rescue me, that losing weight was dangerous and would kill me, that I would never deal with my past by going back that way (he’s right). Headshrink said to me, “Your past is very complicated. You have Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Complex. You have never up until recent years not known abuse. There was no break between one situation and the next. You went from childhood abuse and neglect, and torture, while being ostracised and bullied at school, straight into being abused and tortured by Wanker, and straight from there into years of  torture at hospital.” Yes, he actually said that – torture at hospital. And again, he’s right. He said that it’s not likely that I will ever recover from my past – I never had a chance to form any other views of the world other than that it was abusive, and when I got finally free from that, I took over abusing my own self. He’s right yet again – and I wish he wasn’t.

The past is what haunts me the most – and what drives my eating disorder. Starving has been a volume switch on the memories and the pain. Bingeing stuffs the feelings and memories down, especially those of my mother’s cruelty around food. Purging happens because I feel just so dirty and foul inside.

I have never known what it’s like to not feel like a horrible person. I still expect people to loathe me on sight, to instantly pick me as inferior and just, bad. This means I constantly battle social anxiety and deep feelings of shame.

I know there are people out there who say – JUST GET OVER IT. Put it behind you, and move on. And they have to be the most ignorant of all ignoramuses – because you cannot just get over something like what I lived. You cannot. You cannot just put it behind you and move on (and I tried that – first with throwing myself into life and pretending that none of it hurt me or affected me, then with every new permutation of eating disorder, over-exercise and obsession – and look where it’s gotten me). In fact, I don’t know what I actually can do. I don’t know if it’s actually possible for me to heal from it. Perhaps it’s possible for me to reach a place of acceptance and healing where I’m able to exist on a day to day basis without being in excruciating emotional pain – and that will be a blessed relief. I’m happy if that’s what I could achieve. But totally healed? As Headshrink said today and I’ve long suspected – just not possible.

In recent weeks, my search for a new Headshrink catalysed current Headshrink and my GP putting their heads together and finding a psychologist who does trauma work. In Australia, you can get five visits to a psychologist per year under Medicare if you have a mental health care plan – so we spent hours yesterday doing one up for this, and now I will book the appointments. Headshrink wants me to take the appointments fairly close together for an intense period of trauma therapy – and we will see how I go. In return, I’m not leaving him and defecting to a knew, unknown Headshrink after all. Trauma therapy was what I wanted. And it’s now what I’m getting. I hope, HOPE it helps.

I also don’t believe that I can fully recover from my eating disorder. I’ve long suspected it. I DO believe that recovery is possible. It is entirely possible. I have friends who have gone from being extremely sick for years with eating disorders to completely recovered today – to a point where food does not bother them, weight does not bother them, the ED negative screaming voice does not bother them. They actually are LIVING and HAPPY and ED doesn’t have a place in their lives any more. So it’s possible. And just because I no longer believe in it for me – does NOT mean it’s not possible for anyone else. Every single one of us comes from a different background, with different genetic make-up, different support structures, different lives. No two people with ED are the same. So it’s entirely possible that you can recover, even if someone else cannot. 

Tetyana from Science Of EDs Blog said it best  in this thread on the F.E.A.S.T Facebook group. (If you are not a member of this Facebook group, please click here to see the cut and pasted thread)I absolutely recommend reading this thread – it’s HUGE, but it’s one of the most interesting, enlightening discussions I have ever read on eating disorders, on the possibility of recovery, and the causes. Tetyana said:

“..I don’t think you need co-morbid conditions, or trauma, or anything like that, per se. Whatever triggers it, in my opinion, is whatever it is that leads the individual to “discover” that restricting is either anxiolytic, or eating food is anxiety-provoking. I do think that co-morbid conditions, and this has been shown in the literature, make recovery harder. That’s why I don’t think it is fair to say everyone can recovery 100% in the sense of being free from the mental aspects of the disorder. Regarding how many genes are involved, oh, I have no idea, I was throwing around random numbers just for scale…”

So it’s different for us all. Some of us can recover fully. Some of us will not be able to – but that is no reason to give up. People live with serious illness every where. People manage Diabetes, for instance, and can manage to live fully and happily despite it if they manage all  aspects of their health properly. I’ve been told for years by most of my treatment people that management is really what my best hope is – but I’ve often rejected that. Now I see that they are most likely right.

I’m just not going to give up – in case any of us were wrong!

I’m still going to keep on going with trying to fight this. I’ve been fighting slipping back into my old patterns of not eating or drinking at all until 8pm-ish, then my dinner turning into a binge and purge. No more. And and I’m not going to let this rob me of my chance to actually have a life not completely full of ED stuff. I’m still doing ballet - and loving it. And my tentative trial of volunteer work went well, I’m now going to be working on a weekly basis. And what an opportunity it is – I truly am beginning to think it was meant to be. What better place for someone who is so lacking in confidence and skills to volunteer than with people who help women with just these issues every single day? Lucky me.

I also managed to finish my painting in the art workshop I’ve been doing for the past few months – this was something I really struggled to attend, especially given that I never knew from one week to the next what I was even painting – I sat in front of that canvas and felt clueless, scared, blank, and I hated whatever I’d done on it. It changed hugely from one week to the next – from orange to purple to red and blue in the mountains, from a daytime setting to the middle of the night, from being a seascape to being a landscape with no water at all! But I finished. And on Thursday this week my painting is in the exhibition and silent auction we were preparing for. I’m so happy. Here is a sneak peek:Rotten photo – sorry. But I was pretty pressed for time!

So I’m fighting again. And hopefully, letting everyone know how much I’m struggling will help me by keeping me honest about it. It’s easy to hide your struggles on the internet. Hopefully I will have some far more positive news to report next time I talk about how I’m going.

Thank you for reading – I really appreciate all of you who read, who comment, who lurk, who CARE. You are all just awesome.